On the late afternoon of 29th January I ventured into Wetherspoons in George Street, Hove. It might have been the way I was feeling, but the place seemed cleaner than before, perhaps new carpets and soft furnishings? This gave me sufficient courage to head for the bar, carrying my CAMRA 50p off tokens before me.
And it was worth it – Exmoor Gold on the first group of pumps, so a pint was mine for a net price of £1.60. Hurrah!
As I sat and people-watched I thought, “still the same clientele”. A nearby table of young, grossly overweight women struggled out of their booth to stump out, in their trainers and jogging pants, for a cigarette in the cold.
Then I started to notice the ‘men-with-bad-walks’, three of them, not together, but alike. One with a single elbow crutch, he may have had a second, but not when navigating from distant seat to bar with a glass. The second with a stacked boot and limp, which was as nothing to the third, whose right leg was permanently bent at the knee, giving him a lurching gait as he alternately fell onto his effectively short right leg, then hauled up onto the longer left leg, causing him to sway dangerously from side to side as he made his way outside to smoke or moved back to the fruit machine which provided his indoor entertainment. Never spilt a drop of his beer though.
Back to the bar to see what other wonders awaited me i listened to a Scot telling his tale of woe to a young eastern European barmaid. “Not my fault, laid off by bad weather, what am I supposed to eat? Grass?”, then he bought another pint and wove away across the room.
I found a pint of Triple fff Moondance – even better than the Gold, laden with hops, and gorgeously smooth.